Portable, wireless devices are used in countless aspects of everyday life. From the basic phones carried by millions of people, to advanced technological devices such as laptops and tablet computers, to wireless medical devices, at any given time a person can be singly transporting a veritable cornucopia of computing technology.
At the same time, vehicle computing capabilities and output devices have also been rapidly advancing and becoming more prevalent in the vehicles that people use in everyday transit. Advanced multimedia displays can be found, sometimes in several places, within vehicles, and wireless communication systems in conjunction with wireless devices and these displays allow access to resources far beyond those accessible in the typical automobile of twenty years past.
It would not be unusual for a family of four traveling in a vehicle to have four cellular phones, at least one portable computer or computer-like device, such as a tablet, and a portable game system. Further, the vehicle itself may have multiple media outputs, such as speakers, rear visual screens and a center stack mounted navigation display.
With so many media sources and outputs available, it could be difficult to manage content delivery to a particular display. If each device was independently operated, then this may be less of an issue, but there has been a push in modern multimedia environments to allow various devices to share content. In a vehicle, as much as anywhere else, the number and type of devices may be subject to frequent change, as passengers enter and exit a vehicle, and ride in varying configuration. In a non-mobile environment, such a problem could be addressed by requiring user configuration of device communication on a per-use instance, but in a vehicle environment this could lead to unwanted distractions for a driver.